


Spikenard

by Brighid



Category: Smallville
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-07
Updated: 2012-08-07
Packaged: 2017-11-11 16:20:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid/pseuds/Brighid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The secret to having everything is to want nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spikenard

Spikenard  
by Brighid

When Clark comes in he is _Clark_ , Lex knows this, but something of the other remains, like an afterimage, like a photoflash burned into the back of the eye. It leaves Clark a little bleached and wan, dims his smile and the sheen of his eyes. It hurts Lex, just a little, to see this, to bear witness to this, but, then what had he expected?

In the first week he'd known Clark, he'd found him up on a cross. Sometimes, in his infinite irony, the ineffable Fucker provides foreshadowing. 

And so Lex has learned this: Clark is Clark and Superman is Superman and the two of them commingle in the body Lex so dearly loves; it is both that simple and that impossible. He has taught himself to watch for the nights when Clark comes home to him just a little too faded about the edges, a little too quiet. On those nights Lex opens his arms and says nothing at all, just touches the space between Clark's shoulder blades, that place where wings should be, and strokes it. It feels just as fragile as human flesh and bone, and it is, in all the ways that matter. He holds Clark as pre-dawn shifts to dawn, and even longer if the silence stretches out too long, too thin. 

When they had first met, Lex had wanted Clark. Wanted his body, wanted his secrets, wanted to trace a thin line down him with kisses like knives and open Clark up until he was elbow-deep, balls-deep in the mysteries that damned near drove him crazy. And every time he reached there was this ... this ... _motherfucking_ wall, and it drove him just that much crazier because, God, but he _wanted_ and worse still, he recognized the same stark hunger in Clark's skittish gaze, in the way his hands reached out before falling away. 

He spent a long time _hating_ Jonathan Kent and his Midwest mediocrity, hating Lana's doe-eyed sweetness and Chloe's flame and pretty much anybody who got any piece of Clark that he himself did not have.

He found, as months passed, became a year, more than a year, that the more he wanted, the less he had. The wall between them got wider, deeper, and Clark could hardly bear to look him in the eye. He took to saying things that made Clark flinch, just to get past that wall, even if it made him guilty as hell afterwards. The distance between them was in every gesture, every breath, every averted glance and half-told truth, have-spoken lie. It made him edged, it made him caustic.

It made him madder than hell.

It made him ache inside.

It wasn’t until things quite literally came undone -- an explosion at the plant, never directly attributable to Lionel, but still -- that Lex finally saw the pattern, finally understood the single path to the heart of the labyrinth. Strange that clarity should be found in the middle of disjointed and fragmented memory, but if several tonnes of shit being blown to hell was meant to be his Damascus, so be it. All that matters in retrospect was that Clark was there, with him, for no earthly reason he can even remember. And then everything was sound and fury and stench and heat, and he was being dragged through Hell itself by Clark. A Clark who found others along the way with uncanny accuracy, who tossed aside debris like it was set dressing on Star Trek, who used his body to shield Lex from the heat, the secondary blasts. A Clark who pulled out the dead alongside the living and who closed their eyes if they had eyes left to close. A Clark who fell to his knees when they at last made it outside and vomited helplessly onto the cracked, charred concrete, body shaking so hard that Lex was afraid that Clark's very atoms might come apart.

And so he had laid his hand down, in that hollow between the younger man's shoulder blades, felt the tremble and the scorch and sorrow. Heard Clark gag and retch and say something utterly foolish about "if only…" and Lex hadn't wanted anything in that moment. Didn't give a fuck about the things he'd half-seen, didn't give a good goddamn about the smouldering south wing of the plant. Just rested his hand and felt Clark's heart and his grief and tried to pour himself into that single contact.

Told Clark to hush. Stroked his quivering back and whispered, "hush." Knelt down in the dirt and filth and told him, "hush" and kissed his sour mouth and breathed into it a sigh, a final hush.

In that moment, Lex just loved Clark, without wanting anything at all.

And finally became what his father never was, and everything he most wanted to be. 

)0(

Finnegan, Begin Again

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the perfume salve Mary is said to have washed Jesus' feet with at the Seder, the Last Supper. It was a freely given thing, it was a kind thing. It was removed from intrigues and politics. A kind, undemanding touch. Sometimes that's what's needed.


End file.
